The April and May 2015 earthquakes in Nepal damaged or destroyed over 755,000 homes, making housing the single largest reconstruction need and the Government of Nepal’s (GON) highest priority. USAID is funding a number of complementary initiatives to help meet this need and support the GON’s owner-driven housing reconstruction efforts. USAID has provided over $23.3million supporting to the housing sector to date.

The five-year, $10.3 million Baliyo Ghar project, implemented by the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET), is a key part of USAID/Nepal’s reconstruction portfolio. Designed to help homeowners and communities rebuild in a way that increases their resilience to future disasters, Baliyo Ghar is closely aligned with the Government of Nepal (GON) owner-driven housing reconstruction project which empowers and supports homeowners, allowing them to build back safer. Baliyo Ghar established district- and local-level reconstruction technology centers, construction models, and demonstration homes. Project mobile units provide technical assistance to homeowners at the household and community level. At the national level, Baliyo Ghar supports the GON in developing improved and standardized training curricula and procedures to be used during masons and engineers training and while orienting homeowners.

After the devastating earthquake on April 25, 2015, mental health needs in Nepal increased considerably. The alarming rate of suicidal ideas in 10 percent of earthquake-affected populations revealed through a rapid survey indicated the high mental health burden. As there is no mental health desk at the Government of Nepal’s Ministry of Health (MoH), the UN World Health Organization (WHO), as co-lead of the Health Cluster, is supporting the MoH to fill this gap. Immediately after the 2015 earthquake, there was an urgent need to coordinate among partners implementing mental health response activities to ensure adherence to WHO and Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) guidelines.

The Kamala River Basin End-to-End (E2E) Early Warning System contributes to increase resilience of communities to floods, while strengthening stakeholder capacity to manage an E2E early warning system.

Despite a decade-long conflict and other political challenges, Nepal has made remarkable progress in expanding learning opportunities for children and adults. Since 1990, net primary school enrollment rates have increased from 64 to 96 percent, with near gender parity. However, the quality of education remains low, as are secondary school completion rates.

Under the SSDP, the Ministry of Education (MOE) prioritizes reading as a foundational skill for life and has launched the National Early Grade Reading Program (NEGRP). In recognizing the importance of strengthening country ownership, sustainability, and technical capacity to improve early grade reading, USAID directly channels assistance through host country systems to support the implementation and scale up of NEGRP. In 2014, USAID commenced a five-year commitment of direct budget support to the MOE to implement NEGRP in 16 districts in the Eastern, Central, Western, Mid-Western and Far-Western regions. USAID’s support will help improve reading skills of one million children in grades 1-3.

This project aims to strengthen local capacity for emergency preparedness through a Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) approach and to increase the resilience of livelihoods through the prevention of landslide disasters and establishment of safer agricultural livelihood strategies. Prevention of landslide disasters in the targeted watershed areas reduces the loss of life and livelihoods related to such hazards.

On July 25, the U.S. Government (USG) announced $140 million in additional funding to support refugees from Syria and host communities in Lebanon, bringing total USG humanitarian assistance in Syria and the region to nearly $6.7 billion since the start of the Syria complex emergency. The funding includes $108 million from State/PRM to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as well as $32 million from USAID/FFP to support the UN World Food Program (WFP). More than 1 million Syrian refugees were registered in Lebanon as of June 30, according to UNHCR

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported a decline in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) sheltering in northeastern Nigeria’s Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states between May and June, with nearly 1.69 million IDPs registered in June, compared to approximately 1.75 million IDPs in May.

The food security and nutrition situation in southeastern Ethiopia is deteriorating, with some households in parts of acutely drought-affected Somali Region experiencing an elevated risk of Catastrophe—IPC 5—levels of acute food insecurity, according to the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).4 Relief actors—including USAID/OFDA and USAID/FFP—are monitoring the evolving food security and nutrition situation and scaling up ongoing humanitarian interventions.